UNITED NATIONS, July 9. /TASS/. There are grounds to think that the Ukrainian ant-missile projectile that fell down on a hospital in Kiev was fired to intercept Russia’s strike on a military target, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said.

"We have been repeatedly saying that Russia never targets civilian facilities in Ukraine. As for strikes by the Russian aerospace forces that were delivered on Ukrainian defense industry facilities and airbases of the Ukrainian army, one of the targets in Kiev as the Artyom Plant, one of the biggest manufacturers of airborne missiles, weapons, and munitions," he said at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. "Since the plant is located some two kilometers off the Okhmatdet children’s hospital, there are grounds to think that the Ukrainian air defense projectile that hit it was launched to intercept the Russian missile that targeted the plant."

"Such tragedies could have been avoided should the Kiev regime observe the norms of international humanitarian law and refrain from deploying air defense systems and heavy weapons in residential quarters," Nebenzya stressed.

He noted the fact that "the tragedy when an air defense projectile hit the children’s hospital occurred just ahead of the NATO summit." "Notably, this is the third NATO summit since the beginning of the special military operation and similar situations occurred head each of them," he recalled.

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Russian Armed Forces carried out a high-precision strike on Ukrainian defense facilities and air bases in response to Kiev’s attempts to attack energy facilities inside Russia, hitting all designated targets. Russia’s top brass dismissed as untrue Ukrainian allegations that a Russian missile strike deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure as they said images and footage from the site of the attack showed a Ukrainian air defense missile crashing into the health facility. The ministry emphasized that "the Kiev regime has been throwing such tantrums for years, each time ahead of a get-together (summit) of its NATO sponsors."